I sent this particular poem to Ian because it included a lot of repetition; Ian’s style involves repetition, productive repetitions, calibrated repetitions, sung repetitions, drone repetitions, blind repetitions, profound repetitions.

To my mind the repetition was a bug; from the perspective of efficient communication, a repeated word is an inefficient redundant symbol. In my mind, an ancient mantra chanted: effective text is succinct and to the point. But Hatcher’s work (among others) reminds me of the parallel/opposite tradition of trance ritual (incantation incantation incantation …) appropriated by post-modern poetics. Time does not matter: matter cycles.

Poetry belongs to both traditions (efficient condensation and redundant trance-inducing repetition). It is both a sustainment of affective efficient communication where redundancy is reduced and it is also a mode of being that involves states of consciousness invoked by rhythm and repetition.

Repetition is exactly what my code started churning out unexpectedly today after I made an error in how I dealt with 2 letter prepositions followed by punctuation. So I generated 10k+ poems in that style.

A computer-generated stanza

predictably, aluminum business and USDA diverge divergediverge and the deflagration catapult sow in the sagas van chicken farm carnival carnivalcarnival with shallot desktop and radicchio